BCCI cracks whip, prunes National Cricket Academy staff

Updated: 01 May 2013 00:09 IST

The plan to cut down the size of the administrative wing was mooted at an appraisal meeting in Chennai a fortnight back. The NCA's pruned staff-list, effective from May 1, largely features coaches at the moment.

Written by Wisden India Staff

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The expected downsizing of the National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bangalore was made formal on Tuesday with at least a dozen employees being shown the door as the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) cracked the whip in a bid to increase the efficiency of the NCA and to reduce expenditure.

Among those sacked was AK Jha, the NCA's administrative manager, as well as other managers and house-keeping staff.

Confirming the restructuring, Ranjib Biswal, the NCA chairman, said, "We have sacked our NCA administrative staff as decided earlier in the National Cricket Academy committee meeting. The NCA was overstaffed and we had to prune down number of staff to reduce the expenditure. However, most of the trainers, coaches and physios will be retained."

The plan to cut down the size of the administrative wing was mooted at an appraisal meeting in Chennai a fortnight back. The NCA's pruned staff-list, effective from May 1, largely features coaches at the moment. Ashish Kaushik and Nitin Patel, the two physios, as well as Sudarshan, the trainer, are among those who have been retained alongside Dinesh Nanavati, Bharath Arun and R Sridhar, all coaches, and Kinjal Suratwala, the doctor.

However, it was learnt that other coaches and trainers have been asked to vacate the facility by July 31.

The proposal came about because the BCCI felt the annual budget of Rs 16 crore was not commensurate to the output. "The BCCI's budget for the NCA has been growing every year, the need of the hour is to cut down on unnecessary spending," a BCCI official had said after the meeting.